Edward Redfield (1869 - 1965). Edward Willis Redfield was an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. He is best known today for his impressionist scenes of the New Hope area, often depicting the snow-covered countryside. He also spent his summers on Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where he interpreted the local coastline. He frequently painted Maine's Monhegan Island. Redfield was born in 1869 in Bridgeville, Delaware. He showed artistic talent at an early age, and from 1887 to 1889 studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. His teachers at the Academy included Thomas Anshutz, James Kelly and Thomas Hovenden. Anshutz maintained the teaching methods of Thomas Eakins, which focused on an intense study of the nude as well as on human anatomy. While at the Academy, Redfield met Robert Henri, who was later to become an important American painter and teacher, and the two became lifelong friends. His other Academy friends included the sculptors Charles Grafly and Alexander Sterling Calder. Redfield and Robert Henri traveled to France and studied at the Academie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. At both French art academies, he studied with William Adolphe Bouguereau, one of the leading and best-known French academic painters. In Europe, Redfield admired the work of impressionist painters Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Norwegian Fritz Thaulow. In France he met Elise Deligant, the daughter of an innkeeper, and the two married in 1893. Redfield and his wife returned to America and settled in Centre Bridge, Pennsylvania, near New Hope in 1898. He was one of the first painters to move to the area, and is sometimes considered a co-founder of the artist colony at New Hope along with William Langson Lathrop, who arrived in the same year. Redfield would be considered the leader of a group of landscape painters who settled near the Delaware River, north of the Pennsylvania town of New Hope. His art was seen as totally American, not copying the style of the French Impressionists as earlier American Impressionists, such as Childe Hassam had done. Art critic and well-known artist, Guy Pene Du Bois wrote,The Pennsylvania School of Landscape Painters, whose leader is Edward W. Redfield, is our first truly national expression. It began under the influence of the technique of the French Impressionists. It has restricted itself patriotically to the painting of the typical American landscape. J. Nilsen Laurvik was an even greater champion of the art of Redfield. He wrote, Among the men who have done most to infuse an authentic note of nationalism into contemporary American Art, Edward Redfield occupies a prominent position. He is the standard bearer of that progressive group of painters who are glorifying American Landscape painting with a veracity and force that is astonishing the eyes of the Old World. Redfield and the other members of the group had a huge influence on twentieth century American landscape painting. In fact, the later American landscape painter, Emile Gruppe, who was not part of this Pennsylvania School of Landscape Painting wrote, I can still remember the great National Academy shows. Three painters dominated the walls: Edward Redfield, Daniel Garber and Elmer Schofield. They all worked boldly and with wonderful color-and you never critically compared them, for you loved each one when you stood in front of his canvas. Unlike New York City or Boston, Philadelphia, never really developed as a mecca for Impressionist painters. In fact, William Gerdts has written, The major school of Impressionism flourished not in Philadelphia but in the area around New Hope. Its central figure was Edward Redfield. But Redfield and his circle were primarily landscape painters, and therefore it does not seem surprising that they would prefer undeveloped rural Bucks County to the urban sprawl of Philadelphia. As a city, Redfield was more excited by the rising architecture of New York, creating some of the finest urban landscapes. Although in a Tonalist rather than in an Impressionist style, Redfield spent at least six months in New York City in 1909 creating an important group of city views. These were very large works, which were panoramic in nature. Redfield's artistic associates from Philadelphia, including Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens and George Luks had already moved to Manhattan. But unlike them, Redfield painted idealized views of city life-majestic areal views, where the figures were very small, and the focus was on the mood of the East River. The largest of these, an oil painting Between Daylight and Darkness measures 50 x 56 inches, and is probably the largest New York City scene by an American painter from that time.